DTC and Shopify consulting: a standing second opinion, every two weeks.
Consulting is the lightest way to have me in the room: a 60-minute call every two weeks, email between calls answered within two business days, and a written priorities check each quarter. From $6,000 a month (USD), six-month minimum, no hours tracked.
"The thinking partner I didn't know I was missing · until nothing was the same after working together."
The benchmark set behind every Read is public: 8 trackers, 27 calculators, 226 rated ad-to-page pairs.
What a month looks like.
It exists for founders with a good team and a clear plan who want someone who has done it to check the plan. It also exists for smaller companies where a weekly cadence would cost more than the decisions it improved.
- Calls
- Two 60-minute calls a month, same slot, on a shared agenda you add to between calls. The agenda is the two or three decisions in front of you, not a status update.
- Between calls
- Email. Send the deck, the model, the offer, the hire, the term sheet. You get a written read within two business days, and a call moved up if it cannot wait.
- Quarterly
- A one-page written priorities check: what changed, what the next quarter's three moves are, what to stop.
- Benchmarks
- Access to the same benchmark set and models I use on every engagement, so a question about your CAC or your churn gets answered against a real benchmark band.
Right for some founders. Wrong for others.
Most founders who read that list already know which of the three seats they are in. If you are one of them, the number matters less than whether this is the right seat at all, and settling that takes a twenty-minute conversation.
$6,000 to $8,000 a month, and what that buys elsewhere.
Where a client lands inside the range depends on the size of the business and whether one founder or a small leadership group is on the calls. The number is stated in the readout of The Read, before you commit to anything beyond two weeks. For context, Consulting sits below the floor of the fractional executive market and below any agency retainer, and it buys a call with the person who has run the play rather than a team executing one.
A full-time hire, a fractional CMO, and an agency retainer all cost more for less direct access; the comparison, with figures, is on the engagements page.
Six months, then a year at a time.
Six-month minimum, renewing for twelve months at a time after that. Sixty days' written notice either side once the minimum has run. Billed monthly in advance in US dollars. Moving up to Advisory happens at any monthly boundary on fourteen days' notice, with no new minimum. The full terms, including scope and what is quoted separately, are on the engagements page.
Questions before we talk.
Bring the plan. I'll check it.
A free 30-minute call first: what the plan is, where you're stuck, and whether a call every two weeks is the right cadence for it. If it isn't, I'll say so.